


dare

by TheRatsAreListening



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate first kiss, Back By Unpopular Demand: Me, M/M, Softness, Truth or Dare, because everyone is doing those, canon-divergent episode 3, cass is an accidental jerk but this is not an "anti" fic, corny trope because the straights have had them all and mom said it's my turn on the cheese, i like her i just think she suffers from the game wanting me to like her more than I do, jake being Best Boy as a side plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-20 08:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRatsAreListening/pseuds/TheRatsAreListening
Summary: There's no universe in which a bunch of people huddled around a campfire in the woods while high off their asses don't end up playing this game. Just what could go wrong?
Relationships: Sean Diaz/Finn
Comments: 19
Kudos: 150





	dare

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this For Myself. It's not polished. It exists on-line because a few people liked the other one.  
> [https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141270]  
> If you can enjoy it as it is, please go right ahead.  
> If you have never heard the song Sean sings, here it is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwZNL7QVJjE

  
"No fucking way."

Hannah rolls her eyes. "Come on. That's the dare. No bargaining."

 _You're right_ , Sean thinks, _there's other stages of grief to go through first._

"Well, can I change my mind?"

"I don't know if you should," Jake chimes in with a shrug. "Truth could've been way worse."

"See? Jake knows, we're a bunch of nosy fuckers who can't mind our own business. You're better off this way." Finn seems amused by the situation, but not in a schadenfreude sort of way. He's not excited that they've managed to make Sean uncomfortable, he's just enjoying the moment.

Sean shoots Cassidy a look.

"You're not allowed to laugh at me."

"I'm not about to _ask permission_ , city boy," she retorts, entirely unimpressed with his attempt to put his foot down. "But I'm sure it won't be that bad."

He shifts uncomfortably, and Daniel slumps further against his shoulder. He's been asleep for a couple minutes. Sean doesn't wanna move him yet, because the motion might wake him up, even though the noise they've been making somehow hasn't. He still can't believe they've dared him to sing when they have a (more or less) professional musician in the group, who will definitely be judging. It's kind of sadistic. But he supposes that's what the game is for.

He looks down. The light of the fire has turned the hands in his lap into a pair he kind of struggles to recognize as his own. Maybe it'll click if he moves them a little.

Hannah is having none of it. "Stop stalling,"

"It's rude to complain when the show's free," Penny counters her, and Sean feels oddly grateful.

He tries to straighten his back and shoulders in a way that will still allow him not to make eye contact with the group. It'll help with better air flow. He knows that from... somewhere, it's really far away now. He scrambles for a song. He used to know so many of them, have all the words memorized, but he hasn't actually listened to any music in so long, that it's like when you want to remember the voice of someone who's been dead a few years. It gets worse the more you try. Something eventually rises up, and Sean finds that, while sort of fitting, it's an odd choice for him. But the crowd is getting impatient, so he runs with it.

"If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, and the mountains should crumble to the sea..."

Okay. They're not booing him yet. He gets just a little louder. Daniel stirs against his shoulder, but doesn't wake up.

"I won't cry, I won't cry, no, I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand, stand by me." 

He trips on the little run, and it dawns on him that he might have started too low, but that'll make the higher portion easier to reach, so maybe it's not all bad. 

"So, darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh, stand, stand by me. Stand by me."

And he stops.

Surprisingly, the first objection comes from Penny: "What, no first verse?"

"You couldn't handle it," Sean jokes, trying to pretend like he totally knew that wasn't the beginning of the song.

"Right, so you need a teleprompter," Cassidy teases. "And you only kinda know how to breathe, but it really wasn't all that bad. We can make a singer of you yet, Sean Diaz." What a weird recipe for a compliment sandwich.

"I knew I was bad at a lot of things, but I didn't imagine _breathing_ would be on the list."

"Ignore her, sweetheart. You could sing me to sleep."

Finn is always so slow when he talks. Even when he's really excited and animated and his hands are moving like spiders on caffeine - which Sean actually quite likes - he doesn't speed up a whole lot, like he's the only person Sean knows who doesn't struggle to keep up with his own brain. He's never in a rush for the conversation to move on or for the subject to change. It's as if he's actually content exactly where he is. Sean wishes he could be like that.

Cassidy snaps him out of it. 

"Pick your victim."

"Jake," he says. "Truth or dare?"

Jacob picks dare. He always does. Being the shy type, Sean expected him to stick to truth, It's the safer option, even if it opens you up to personal questions, because you can lie. If you get a messed-up dare, you just gotta do it. He supposes that'd be cheating, though, so maybe having to _do_ something dumb is easier for Jake than having to _say_ something dumb. To each their own.

"I dare you to... uh... Say the alphabet out of order!"

"That's almost too tame," someone observes.

Sean shrugs. "It's Jake. I'm not gonna be mean to him! I don't know how you guys can do it."

"Thanks. Right. So G, T..."

"Wait". Sean opens the his sketchbook to the last page, and quickly writes the whole thing down. "Okay, now go. I'll cross them off." 

"G, T, B, M, L, P, Z..." He nods with every letter, like it helps him keep track, and sometimes he stops and moves his hands like he's counting them. Impressively, he gets them all, and Sean can't help feeling like he's even showing off a little, because he appears to make a point to not even list pairs of letters in their standard order. "Q, D, S, U and J."

"That's all of them," Sean confirms, still kind of not believing it. It actually gets Finn to cheer, but he doesn't have the time to process how fucking cute that is, because it is also loud and right next to him, and it gets Daniel to wake up.

"Guys, why are we yelling?"

"Oh, shit. I'm sorry, lil' man. Didn't mean to wake ya."

"Are you still playing? What did I miss?"

"Finn telling us what the deal is with the beads in his hair."

"No way! I wanna know!"

"I'll tell you tomorrow," Finn promises.

"You also missed Cassidy doing a cartwheel, and a trippy version of the alphabet."

Cassidy won't let him get away with that. "And your bro singing."

Daniel tries to stifle a yawn. "I think I heard some of that. Don't quit your day job."

"Man. No love." He squeezes him into a sideways hug. "Wanna go to bed?"

Daniel nuzzles into him to shield his face from the light, and Sean can feel him smiling. "It's okay. I know you wanna stay."

"I do feel kinda bad that we hang out without you so much."

He watches Daniel consider it, weigh what that sentiment is worth in terms of bargaining chips and emotional blackmail, and then hears him say: "I kinda don't wanna walk. Carry me and I'll forgive you."

"Deal. Be right back, dudes, don't plot my demise while I'm gone?"

"Don't worry," Finn reassures him. "Wouldn't let 'em."

Sean picks Daniel up, head resting on his shoulder, and Daniel holds onto him like the cutest baby koala. Once inside the tent, Sean decides to sit with him until he falls back asleep, but that's only about a minute. He zips the tent up and gets back to the campfire.

"Your brother is so cute," Penny comments.

"An hour ago, I'd have told you you can have him, but I don't know anymore."

"Penny," Jake decides. "Truth? Dare?"

"Truth."

"Weirdest thing you've ever eaten."

The answer comes almost instantly.

"Pineapple."

" _Pineapple_." Jake doesn't seem convinced, and neither is Sean, but Penny manages to get everyone on board in an impressively brief three sentences.

"That stuff stings! It's like the jellyfish of fruit. And then I found out it feels that way because the damn thing is eating you while you're eating it! That's messed up!"

"Wait, really?"

"Mmhm. Hannah."

"Dare."

The idea comes to him way too fast to have plausibly never been entertained before. "I have some hair bleach left. Blonde highlights might be a cool look on you."

Hannah shoots him a look that seems to cause his ambitions to shrink a little. 

"...One highlight."

"My hair had better not fall out,"

When the game resumes, Penny has relocated between Hannah and Jake and is wrapping a strand of Hanna's hair in paper. There's a slight smell of ammonia from the bleach, but it's kind of buried under the booze, weed, and wood smoke.

"Cassidy."

"Dare."

There's definitely something in the air tonight.

"Play your guitar the other way."

"Okay, so upside down _and_ left-handed. How impressed would y'all be if I did it perfectly?"

"Pretty impressed," Sean confesses.

"Hold on to that thought, 'cause that's all you're getting."

"Really?" Hannah sounds almost like she's scolding a small child for ditching their chores again. "Even Sean stuck with his dare."

Sean suspects he should be offended.

"Calm down, it was a _joke_." She reaches for the guitar and instinctively tries to hold it the right way up, before Jake points it out. Her brain seems to melt for a second, as she very clearly struggles with the inversion, and it turns the act of positioning her body correctly into an entire process. It takes her almost a minute to figure out one chord, and everyone is having too much fun with it. "Fingering a C has never been this hard," Cassidy laughs, bent over the guitar to try and look at the strings. "I have no fucking clue where anything is! It's like I've never had hands before." She fumbles for a while longer, and then her back straightens up a bit. "Anyway, here's Wonderwall," she declares, and they all laugh.

The chords buzz, and some of the notes are clearly muted, and perhaps farther apart than they should be, but none of them are overwhelmingly wrong to anyone's untrained ears, and so Hannah magnanimously decides that Cass has carried out her dare to its glorious conclusion. Cassidy strokes her guitar before putting it down. 

"I'm sorry, baby. I'll never hurt you like that again... Sean."

When your gut tells you something, you always listen. Sean knows this, because he never does, and it always ends up costing him.

"Truth," says Sean's gut.

"Dare," says Sean's mouth.

"Didn't learn your lesson from last time?" She's having a blast.

"I don't learn," Sean laughs, "ask anyone."

"We'll see about that."

Oh. He's in _danger._

Silence falls over them while Cassidy is thinking. Nobody throws in suggestions. Nobody rushes her. Not even Hannah. It's very unlike this group to be so quiet for so long. Some of them might even be holding their breath. Sean definitely is. He's starting to feel uneasy, like something incomprehensible is on the horizon, but also kind of excited. If it's taking so long to decide on, it's probably gonna be a good dare.

"I dare you..." Cassidy starts, slowly.

"Wait, hold on." Something is missing, and Sean is already on the way to solving the problem before he's actually understood what it is. He reaches an empty hand in Finn's general direction and Finn, ever the mind-reader, hands over his joint. He takes a drag and gives it back. Not yet quite proportionally baked, compared to everyone else, but at least the gap is more of a trench and less of a ravine. "Okay, let's go."

"...to kiss Finn." 

The group has some sort of a reaction that is very hard to quantify. Sean himself just blinks. 

"For real?" 

This earns him something akin to an explanation: 

"Poor boy can't work up the nerve to make a move and I'm tired of watching him pine, it's depressing."

Sean looks at Cassidy for a _while_ before he's kind of sure he heard it right, and then he looks at Finn, who is, for the first time since Sean has known him, wearing an expression that he has no idea how to read. It's not disgust or panic or anger, so it could be worse. But he doesn't know _what_ it is. Something stirs in him. He looks down briefly, and then back up again.

"No."

"Damn," Cassidy sighs, with an odd mix of disappointment and relief. "Guess we all got you wrong."

" _You all?_ "

"I mean... yeah. You gonna freak out now? You know, it's just a dare. We're not gonna film it."

"Hey, back off the guy," Finn intervenes, cheerful as ever, as if nothing has just happened. 

The incomprehensible expression is gone, replaced again by the goofy smile and those soft eyes. Sean feels marginally better seeing that. Like he's being passively reassured by the universe that everything is _not,_ in fact, about to explode. But "marginally better" isn't quite good.

"He's just the one person on the planet who's not into this." Finn continues, gesturing vaguely at himself. "Had to happen someday."

"Yeah, just didn't think it'd be so soon, you're only -- I have no fucking clue how old you are."

"Guys, I think I'm going to call it a day. Thanks for playing." He's sort of panicking, and sort of angry, but can't recognize either emotion, and so he can't really form a coherent thought in the vein of hoping it's not showing in his voice. He gets up, and makes no effort to hide the fact that he's headed for the lake, and not his and Daniel's tent.

The more time passes, the quieter the voices around the campfire become, compared to the bugs, and the leaves, and the owls, and the sound of stones being skipped across the lake. He tries his best not to pay attention to what they're saying. It allows his emotions to dim too, like the flames. All the better. He still can't tell what they are, and it's kind of a gross feeling. Like anxiety, but thicker, and sticky. Like slugs writing in his chest, almost. It's stupid. They're probably making fun of him, anyway.  
He hasn't been at the lake ten minutes, when he hears footsteps on the path behind him. He doesn't know who he expects it to be, but it's Jake.

"Hey, Sean... Are you okay?"

"M'fine. Sorry I ruined the game."

"I don't think you did. It's okay that you didn't wanna do it. You didn't have to leave."

"They don't really like to let things go. I didn't want them to bring it up every turn."

"Yeah. I know what you mean." The pause is so long that Sean wonders if maybe Jake has already left and he's just too spaced out to have noticed. "Finn isn't upset."

He's just about to - rather rudely - ask why Jake thinks that's his biggest concern, when he experiences a truly rare moment of self-awareness and concludes that this is, in fact, accurate.

"Felt like they were mocking me."

"It's not a very kind game, no. But I think Cassidy just got carried away. Maybe misread some stuff."

"That's the other thing. What did she mean by "we all got you wrong"? What's there to misunderstand?"

Sean can _hear_ the fact that every word Jake says next has been very carefully chosen.

"People are... too complicated to fit neatly into boxes. We can get a sense of community and belonging out of doing it anyway, but sometimes it... fails. And I know it can be uncomfortable to be seen wrong. But it really is just a mistake. It's not an insult."

"I wasn't insulted."

"Oh." That's the sound of relief, if Sean has ever heard it. "Then what happened?"

"I don't know. It's dumb. I'm tired. But thanks for checking in, it was really nice of you."

"Of course, Sean. Let me know if you need anything."

He turns back towards the lake, counting Jake's receding steps without knowing why he's doing it. But they only get quieter for a few seconds before they get louder again.

"I said it's fine, Jake. Go to bed."

"He did."

Finn's unmistakable silhouette is leaning against the tree he and Daniel use for target practice. He seems relaxed, as ever. The moment of... something else back at the camp seems to have been in another life. But Sean is still terrified, even though he's almost convinced that Finn wouldn't do that to him, that they're going to have to turn it into a whole _thing_ now.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself."

"You here to tell me I didn't have to go, too? Jake covered it."

"You didn't. But I'm actually here to apologize for Cassidy."

"If she thinks she needs to apologize, she can do it herself. I don't bite."

"The thing is," says Finn, as if he just can't wait to share the greatest, most well-kept of secrets, and Sean can't help taking a step towards him to listen, "I don't actually care what Cassidy thinks." 

In the moonlight, Sean can tell he's smiling. 

"I worded it wrong. I'm not doing it _fo_ _r_ her. I'm not gonna try and talk you into not being pissed. We all gotta live with the way shit we do affects others." He shrugs. "I wanna know how _you_ feel. You don't have to act like it's no big deal, if it is. That sort of stuff gets to you, and I don't want it to."

Sean would like to process that entire thought, but he's still stuck on "wanna know how you feel". 

" _Me?_ "

"You," says Finn, with just the tiniest of little laughs. It's like they're playing a game.

"I'm good."

"You're gonna need to get a lot better at lying before you can do it to my face, sweetie. Even in the dark."

Sean snorts out a laugh. Finn's good at getting that to happen. Frankly, after the whole thing, he expected the open displays of affection and all the pet names to make him kind of uncomfortable, but they don't. It's like they exist in a whole other dimension. Probably just another facet of Finn seeming so singularly comfortable with himself.

"No, really. It's better," he says, and as he does, he discovers that it's true. "I just needed to cool off."

"Wanna go back, then?" Finn asks, holding out his hand as if he one hundred percent expects Sean to take it.

"Not really..."

"We could make a rule. No smooch dares."

"Smooch?"

"Smooch," Finn confirms, solemnly. There's the game again.

"Nobody says that."

"Well, they should. It's a good word."

"You're ridiculous."

"Thank you!"

Sean sits down on the grass, legs crossed. Finn walks a bit closer before following his lead, and then waits. Sean doesn't know _how_ he knows there's something to wait for. He doesn't know how Finn knows _anything_. 

"How do you do that?"

His question is met with an undefined sound of general confusion.

"I mean, how are you so comfortable? You're just... You call people _honey_ and _sweetheart_ , and you're touchy, and it's just fine. It never gets weird. Even when Cass said what the dare was, you looked thrown for a second, but then you just bounced back. It's like you're made of rubber."

"Would be cool. But I've broken six bones and counting, so tragically, it's not true."

" _And counting?!_ " 

He sounds more alarmed than he means to. Finn laughs, but doesn't answer.

"I just... You're..." He's running out of words that will work. His frustration with himself escapes as a sigh, and he slouches forward. "...More okay with who you are than anyone I know. How does that happen?"

"It doesn't "happen", you just choose it over and over. About every 20 minutes."

"Guess I don't know anything about that sort of stuff."

"And you're also wrong about something else."

At this point, Sean feels it would take less time to make a list of things he's _not_ wrong about.

"What?"

"I don't call "people" honey and sweetheart. Just you."

This sounds like it can't be right, but going back as long as they've known each other, searching through every memory, from the Christmas market to ten minutes ago, Sean realizes that he couldn't name one time Finn has addressed someone else that way to save his life.

"...Huh."

"That a good huh, or a bad huh?"

"I like it," Sean decides. 

Finn's smile holds his attention so completely that he almost doesn't notice his long fingers are woven together in his lap. The gesture seems nervous, but Sean doesn't think he has a reason to be nervous. He just kinda wants to take those hands and pull them apart and hold one in each of his.

Better not.

"I just didn't want them to make a show of it," he confesses after a while. His voice is quiet, and he's not making eye contact. Couldn't.

"Yeah. Me neither."

Sean's used to Finn being full of surprises, but this one still kinda pulls the rug out from under him.

"Wait, so you didn't want me to...?" He doesn't have the nerve to finish the sentence. "Because Cassidy said... Was she making fun of me?"

"No, no!" Finn says immediately, not because he's terribly eager to answer the question, but because he absolutely _will not_ subject Sean to worrying about stuff he doesn't need to worry about. "No, she's definitely onto something."

He doesn't feel ready to look up yet, but he just can't fucking stop himself. He holds Finn's gaze, and his eyes are so soft, it's kinda hard to feel afraid. Finn smiles at him, and it gets even harder.

"Sean, you're something else. You're resourceful, and criminally funny, and I _wish_ the world looked like it does in your drawings. You see the value in stopping to look at stuff that no one else sees, even with all the shit you've been through. It's playing tug o' war with your sense of humanity and you're just not lettin' go. That's a rare thing. I know it sounds lame and overdone. It's not my fault the English language doesn't know what to do with you."

Yeah. Sean's got something in his eye. Definitely. Like, a sand storm. 

It might be a stupid thing to get weepy over, but nobody has ever spent anywhere near that long just... talking about him, and things they like. It feels like he's an entirely different person to Finn than he is to himself. He wishes he could be that guy for real, but failing that, he would even settle for being able to keep coming across that way, regardless of the truth. To his knowledge, nothing about him, real or imagined, has ever made anyone else this happy. He doesn't want it to ever stop.

"So, Cassidy's right. Doesn't mean you gotta do anything. Especially not because they told you to." 

Sean tries to keep his sniffles quiet, but alas, he is heard. Finn gets up to his knees and reaches out to place a hand on his arm, in just the gentlest possible way. 

"Everything alright, sweetheart?"

Sean goes for a joke, because he can't handle anything else.

"You don't have to play modest, we both know I'm not the first person to be moved to tears by one of your speeches."

"I want you to know that flattery will get you _everywhere_. But I didn't mean to monologue."

"I like listening to you talk." He wants to explain that it makes him feel like all he needs to do is be exactly where he is, but none of the words he has feel right. He wants to say "you could monologue me to sleep" to play off the thing Finn said about his singing, but it just sounds like he's calling him boring. 

Fuck words. Maybe he'll draw it, someday. Words get away from him too easily. Case in point, not ten seconds later, he opens his mouth and finds himself having changed the subject back around again. 

"I didn't wanna do it for a dare." From his previous kneeling position, Finn has sat down even closer, right next to him, instead of across, and he's sort of leaning into Sean's shoulder a little, and he's listening so intently that Sean feels naked. "Maybe it's dumb to think first times should be special? I don't think I even do, I just didn't want it to be something that happened because I was dared to do it. I wanted it to be its own thing, I guess."

"It's not dumb. I think every time should be special. And doin' something on a dare while baked gives it a very different flavor. That's kinda the point of it. You could've had both."

"Okay, well, I didn't know _that!_ " Sean retorts, and then can't help but laugh at himself, because he's managed to sound like a toddler who's just discovered he could've had both kinds of dessert instead of a meltdown over trying to pick one.

"You can have anything you want, as far as I'm concerned."

Fuck, is that an invitation? 

Sean dares to find his hand in the dark. He has no idea how to hold it, it's never even crossed his mind there's more than one way you might wanna hold someone's hand. But they figure something out, and then it just... happens. 

That's the best Sean can do to describe it. It happens. There's no drawn-out silence, or nerves, or overwhelming hyper-awareness of just how close they are to each other. It happens, and it makes sense in a way that few things do. It's not like two people falling into something they can't help. It's like two people deliberately walking into it, giving one another something just because they can. Just because there's happiness and comfort and enjoyment in it. It happens on purpose, and it's nothing like the books or movies, and Sean kinda wants to come up with a story in which it _is_ like this, now, because it's just so, so much better. But what he actually, _really_ wants, is to just be exactly where he is. 

Okay, fine, maybe it is a little bit like the books and movies. It's definitely got its own sort of high. Sean can only conclude that people who resort to drugs, or skydiving, or whatever-the-fuck-else when they wanna feel something different have simply never kissed Finn. He might even stop smoking weed if they make a habit of this.

Probably not though. That definitely sounds like it's just the dopamine talking.

"Definitely a good call, doing this alone," he says, after a moment.

"Right? If this was back at the campsite, we would have to stop so they could keep playing."

"We might have to go, though."

"Why? Is it illegal to look at some stars with a pretty boy?"

"Oh, is _that_ what you were doing," Sean teases.

"Could've been! You side-tracked it."

" _I_ side-tracked it?"

"I may be... partially responsible."

"That's better. Not like I don't wanna stay here and get side-tracked with you, I just realized that I've been sitting on a wet spot the whole damn time. You might have to take back the thing you say about me being smart."

Finn looks like he can't decide if he wants to laugh or kiss him again. He opts for the former, because it can be done at the same time as getting up.

"I have a tent we could do this in. There's no skylight at the moment, but I do have a knife."

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

**Author's Note:**

> TWO Life is Strange fics? On my Dishonored-specific account? It's more likely than you think.


End file.
